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There are scenarios when we want to replicate/duplicate entire content tree/individual items and create another structure in same Sitecore Instance, we also want to make sure that content can be shared from parent item to new item, in these scenarios and cases we can make use of Sitecore Cloning which helps to achieve the same.

Clone:

A clone is an item that is not just a copy of the original item, but one that inherits the field values from the original item. If we update a field in the original item, the corresponding field in the clone is also updated, this helps in implementing content sharing across sites/items in the same Sitecore Instance.

What can be cloned:

Here are the following items which can be considered for cloning:

Complete site

Section of site

Individual Item

How to clone an Item:

In order to create a clone, please follow the following steps:

Select the item which you want to clone from content tree.

From the configure tab, click Clone

From Clone Item dialog box, please select the location where you want to create the cloned item.

Click Clone.

Now go to the cloned item, and you will observe the “original value” next to the field, which explains that value for this field is inherited from parent/original item.

How to Unclone an Item:

In order to Unclone an item in Sitecore, please follow the below steps:

Select the Item from content tree which you want to Unclone.

Click on Unclone, from the configure tab.

Once we Unclone an Item, this item becomes an individual item which can be managed separately.

Breaking the Inheritance for Cloned Item:

As i mentioned above that we can Unclone an item, by which that item becomes a new item which can be managed separately.

But, we can also break the inheritance on field level, in order to break inheritance on the field level, just go to clone item and update any specific field value.

Once we update specific field value manually for any clone item, that field won’t share/inherit the value from parent/original item.

This is helpful in cases where certain field values to be shared from parent item, and certain field values managed separately in clone item.

In the above screen shot we can see that “Teaser” doesn’t show any “original value” text because the value was updated directly in the cloned item, but “Main Content” still inherits it from parent item.

Few points to note:

Before we take a decision what item/section should be clone, we need to do understand our content strategy.

For example- If we have to create a microsite which should be based on parent site, we can go for cloning, but, we also have to understand what are the different sections that needs to share the content, if only certain pages needs to be shared, we don’t have to clone the entire content tree(site), rather we can just clone specific pages/items.

Another example can be navigation, we want the navigation to be same for all the sites, but content differs, in this case we can just clone Navigation Items and not pages/items.

We can make use of field value inheritance, if the content of the clones items needs to be different, we can break the inheritance and add specific content to cloned item.

I hope this will help someone who is trying to do understand how clones work in sitecore, please let me know if you have any feedback or questions, happy to help.